iWar

by Bill Gertz

  iWar Policy Proposal Four: Strategic Information Warfare Against the Islamic State. The model for the ideological defeat of Islamic jihadism was demonstrated by President Ronald Reagan, who challenged the liberal dominant foreign policy that dealt for decades with the Soviet Union as mainly a competing social system. Declaring the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” Reagan set in motion a series of policies, both open and covert, that resulted in the downfall of the communist empire. Similarly, the Islamic State can and must be defeated on both the ideological plane as well as through military and intelligence means. This can be accomplished by adapting the same principles and programs used during the Reagan administration against the Soviet Union, adapted now to ideologically attacking and defeating the most violent terrorist group on the planet. This will require a large-scale American-led program to expose the lies and deception inherent in Islamist ideology and offer a moderate religiously based alternative. A series of Centers for Nonviolent Faith will be created that will bring together religious scholars of all faiths to work together on plans to reform Islam to end its terrorist-supporting religious practices. This program will be implemented under a long-term strategic plan with the United States funding and supporting these nongovernmental organization interfaith centers. The centers will be in key countries—the United States, Britain, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia—and will bring together religious scholars and experts from different faiths under the central operating principle that no God-centered religion condones the killing of innocents or the use of suicide in conflict. The central objective will be to define political Islam as un-Islamic.

  As former U.S. government counterterrorism officials Richard Higgins and Stephen Coughlin have noted, currently in the United States the Islamist enemy is under the direction of Muslim Brotherhood Islamist front groups that control the narrative. It is supported by the liberal left narrative that regards Islamism as progressive.

  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE LIBERAL LEFT

  The liberal Left and its policies in America are destroying the fabric of the country. Political, racial, and religious tensions reached unprecedented levels during the 2010s as the nation’s diverse population was turned against American values and traditions by liberal activists bent on promoting policies of resentment, retribution, and socialist transformation. The enemy, as shown earlier, is political correctness. Counter–information warfare programs must be developed and implemented that will attack and counter political correctness, first recognizing that it poses a threat to America’s peace. The political Left continues promulgating a false narrative, widely accepted throughout media, academia, and government, that America is an evil, racist, and repressive state that must be taken apart and replaced with a statist system that would impose “social justice”—defined as government-led efforts to redistribute wealth from rich to poor, while punishing all in society that benefited from so-called white privilege. This destructive vision must be soundly rejected. Political freedom is absolutely essential in the United States, but as Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson noted in a 1949 free speech case, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

  iWar Policy Proposal Five: A Counter–Political Correctness Program. This program will employ a public information campaign that uses truth to expose lies. The central idea is to hold up to the light of public sunshine all the central tenets of the destructive liberal left agenda couched in political correctness. One method will be to host nationwide public debates on the problem of political correctness, in cities and town and on campuses. Through such debates, the true nature of the destructive tenets of political correctness will be exposed and rejected as harmful to America’s traditions and values.

  This program can rely on elements of Information America as well as private sector programs funded by philanthropists.

  Falsehoods and lies that are allowed to affect both government and the private sector must be exposed and rejected. As conservative columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. notes, tradition must be made a major element in the American experience. As Tyrrell exquisitely wrote:

  One thinks of our unique history, with our colonial heritage, George Washington and the war against King George III, the brilliant period of our Founding Fathers, our Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Then came our appearance on the world stage with spectacular contributions to science, sports, industry, commerce and popular culture, to say nothing of the defense and advancement of democracy, freedom and equality. Ours is a great history and we should have a rich tradition, but somehow we have failed the traditions that recall American history and values. In fact, there are Americans denying our traditions. I am talking about the so-called liberals who sneer at American traditions and peel away at them: the tradition of Christmas, the tradition of Thanksgiving, July 4th and all the traditions attacked by political correctness.

  IRAN

  The Islamic Republic of Iran has proclaimed itself an enemy of the United States since the Islamic Republic was created in 1979. As long as Iran continues to regard America as such, there should be no relations or engagement with this leading state sponsor of international terrorism. The nuclear deal carried out by the Obama administration must be recognized as based on the false assumption that negotiating with hard-line Islamist extremists in Tehran will lead to better relations and a less threatening Iran. The nuclear deal must be rejected and a campaign of information warfare must be waged with the goal of ousting the Iranian Islamist regime and replacing it with one that is free and democratic.

  As shown in these pages, Iran poses a direct threat to U.S. peace through its nuclear program and its long-range missiles, which will almost certainly directly threaten American security by 2020.

  Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and until its support for terrorism ceases, there can be no peace between the Islamic Republic and the United States. Through Barack Obama and his administration concluding the international agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, American security has been undermined. The agreement released more than $100 billion in frozen, pre-1979 assets to the Iranian regime that will be used by Tehran to continue killing Americans, directly through the provision of arms and explosives to terrorists, and indirectly through Iranian proxy groups like Hezbollah. Iran’s center of gravity is its brand of Islamist ideology.

  iWar Policy Proposal Six: Transform Iran Project. The Obama administration made a strategic blunder in 2009 by failing to support reformers in the so-called Green Revolution in Iran, who had risen up against the mullahs controlling the country. The Green Revolution was an opportunity to bring about the demise of an enemy that is increasing in power and influence, the Islamist regime in Tehran. An information warfare program targeting Iran will use truthful information warfare tools and digital warfare weapons to expose the Islamist regime as a threat to both regional and world peace, and to counter the apocalyptic ideology behind the Islamists in power. The objective will be to foment a democratic revolution in Iran and replace the theocratic regime with a pro-Western, democratic one.

  NORTH KOREA

  The North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un is an abomination. The United Nations has concluded that the communist regime is guilty of crimes against humanity throughout three generations of dynastic dictators who should not have been allowed to prosper and remain in power into the twenty-first century, much less arm itself with a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and intercontinental-range missiles that can deliver them. North Korea represents an unconscionable failure on the part of the civilized world, which has permitted the regime to persist through decades of totalitarian repression. This failure is mainly the result of its fraternal communist ally China making sure the Kim dynasty continues to boost Beijing’s regional fortunes by maintaining a buffer from the extraordinary free and prosperous system in South Korea. The Kim regime must end and its rulers be held accountable for its crimes. This can be done through an aggressive program of information warfare d
esigned to bring about the peaceful overthrow of the Kim regime and its absorption into the free and open society of South Korea. The first step must be that China, as North Korea’s main patron and supplier, is held accountable for the crimes of North Korea.

  iWar Policy Proposal Seven: Regime Change in North Korea. North Korea is an enemy because it has armed itself with nuclear weapons and missiles while repeatedly threatening to use those weapons against the United States and its allies. The center of gravity for North Korea is the Kim dynasty. An information warfare program against North Korea will begin with the Western development of information infrastructure in the country and then through provision of large numbers of information systems, computers, and smartphones. The regime will seek to use technology to control this new infrastructure but will be unable to do so, because of the ingenuity of the Korean people. Once the infrastructure is in place, information warfare operations can be carried out that will expose the horrors and crimes of the regime and reveal the prosperity and freedoms outside the backward state.

  The program will include co-opting Kim Jong Nam, the out-of-power brother of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, and conducting information operations that will seek to install the brother as a replacement for the current leader.

  • • •

  These programs reflect the kinds of operations and activities that can be carried out once enemies are clearly defined and the means of achieving victory over them, through information warfare means, are developed.

  Some in Congress have recognized the need to prepare the U.S. government for strategic information warfare. In 2008, then-senator Sam Brownback introduced legislation that would have created a new National Center for Strategic Communications, modeled after the USIA. The new center would have engaged in promoting American ideals and countering disinformation. The measure was never passed and died after Congress adjourned that year.

  By 2016, prompted mainly by the Republican-led Congress, others in the U.S. government had begun to realize the urgent need for information warfare tools to prevent losing ground to hostile states that remain highly advanced in the field compared to the United States. One solution was offered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The annual intelligence agency authorization bill for fiscal 2017 contained draft language that would require the president to reestablish a new Active Measures Working Group–type organization focused on the Russian information warfare threat. The legislation defined active measures as covert influence operations using front groups, covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation and forgeries, funding of agents of influence, incitement, and offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts.

  The new committee would be made up of the director of national intelligence, secretaries of state, defense, and the Treasury, the attorney general, energy secretary, and FBI director, along with other key officials. The mission: “To counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and government by exposing falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies,” the legislation states. This revived group would be an important first step in creating American information warfare capabilities.

  • • •

  As shown in these pages, America’s status as a superpower engaged in advancing the traditional ideals of liberty and democracy has been severely eroded through the rise of enemies, ranging from the immediate danger of al Qaeda and its evolution into the ultraviolent Islamic State, to the failure to support a prodemocratic Iranian revolution, to the disastrous policies of appeasement toward Russia, which produced a deadly new revanchist Russia. Shortsighted policies encouraging the rise of the nuclear-armed communist dictatorship that is China and then attempting to address it with an anemic policy of shifting toward the East, called the Asia Pivot, has provided little support to embattled Asian friends and allies greatly concerned by the threat posed by China. America is facing disarray and remains in urgent need of leadership.

  Relations between America and its two main enemies, China and Russia, have reached dangerous levels. China has transformed from a rising nuclear power into a country that is systematically trying to orchestrate the decline of the United States, while driving the American military farther and farther from Asia in a bid to create a geopolitical power shift aimed at forcing the states of the region to kowtow to Beijing’s demands. Russia devolved from a nascent, pro-Western state with democratic aspirations to the new fascism of Vladimir Putin, who is adapting neo-Soviet KGB and Red Army tactics to restore the Soviet model of power over what Moscow calls the “Near Abroad”—the former Soviet republics and eventually Eastern Europe.

  The Islamism threat has metastasized by the failure of secular, politically correct government policies and a leadership that has been rendered incapable of waging information warfare against Islamic extremists—the ultimate solution to a global problem. The failure of successive administrations since 9/11 to wage ideological war on Islamism has forced the United States into expensive and seemingly endless military and intelligence operations that produced successful programs of killing terrorist leaders while doing almost nothing to stop the spread of Islamic jihadism and its ideology, which is creating terrorists who are adaptive and easily self-replicating, like a mutating and increasingly virulent virus.

  The task before us is daunting. But Americans have risen to such challenges in the past. Information warfare presents both challenges and tremendous opportunities for bringing about transformation and ultimately peace. The challenge must be met with nothing less than victory.

  * * *

  I. For more information, see Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York: Henry Holt, 2015).

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is in many ways a culmination of decades of experience working as a journalist covering national security affairs. During those many years I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have worked with a great many people within government and in the private sector who provided tremendous assistance in uncovering facts behind some of the most important news stories. To them I am deeply grateful.

  Among those who provided valuable assistance on the subject of information warfare are Kenneth E. deGraffenreid, Jim Fanell, Sebastian Gorka, Katharine Gorka, John Lenczowski, J. Michael Waller, Michael Pillsbury, Rich Higgins, Patrick Poole, Joe Myers, Michael Rubin, Stefan Halper, Tom Reilly, Brad Johnson, Robert R. Reilly, Angelo Codevilla, Phillip Karber, Mark Sauter, Chris Farrell, and Rowan Scarborough. Special thanks to former CIA officer Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a great American intelligence hero who passed away in April 2016.

  I would like to thank my colleagues at the Washington Free Beacon for their support, especially Chairman Michael Goldfarb, Editor in Chief Matthew Continetti, and President Aaron Harison. Thanks also to my colleagues at the Washington Times, including President and CEO Larry Beasley, Chairman Thomas McDevitt, Executive Editor Chris Dolan, and Michael Jenkins, head of the Times’ parent company. Thanks also to my agent, Joseph Brendan Vallely.

  BILL GERTZ is a national security columnist for the Washington Times and senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon. His column on the Pentagon, Inside the Ring, appears weekly. He currently lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with his wife, Debra. Find him online at Gertzfile.com and @BillGertz.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Bill-Gertz

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Facebook.com/ThresholdEditions

  @Threshold_Books

  ALSO BY BILL GERTZ

  Betrayal:

  How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security

  The China Threat:

  How the People’s Republic Targets America

  Breakdown:

  How America’s Int
elligence Failures Led to September 11

  Treachery:

  How America’s Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies

  Enemies:

  How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets— and How We Let It Happen

  The Failure Factory:

  How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big-Government Republicans Are Undermining America’s Security and Leading Us to War

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Threshold Editions eBook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Threshold Editions and Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  INDEX

  A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

  Abdel-Magied, Yassmin, 292

  Abedin, Huma, 74

  Abeltsev, Sergei, 156

  Abu Ghraib, 216

  Abu-Salha, Moner Mohammad (Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki), 277